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Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “The case of Omar Khadr is an example of horrible injustice in a modern democratic state”

In May 2014, a year before Omar was released on bail from an Alberta prison, he received a phone call from Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Desmond Tutu is a vocal critic of Guantanamo and the U.S. military commission which ‘convicted” Omar. Tutu compares it to similar practices of detention without trial in South Africa under apartheid: “Many people were incarcerated for endless periods, held in solitary confinement simply on the say so of some lackey of an unjust and oppressive system.”

Regarding Omar’s case, Archbishop Tutu later stated:

“The case of Omar Khadr is an example of horrible injustice in a modern democratic state. Omar Khadr was not even tried in an open court, and this is apart from the fact that when he was arrested, he was only 15 years of age-a minor by every credible assessment. It is unconscionable that following a travesty of a trial, where he was treated as adult in a vicious kangaroo court, his own country was an accomplice in holding him in prison.

It has been galling in the extreme to discover that those in other countries, who even helped us overthrow our oppressive system of apartheid, should have no qualms, it seems, to employ the same discredited methods as those of a system they purported to oppose.”

Desmond Tutu recognises that Omar Khadr suffered a horrible injustice by Canada, a modern democratic state.

Call on the federal government to fulfill our legal and moral obligation to Omar.